What has surprised you recently?

That’s not a good way to live. That’s a way to live in stagnation and complacency.

Great conversation is rooted in experimentation and exploration. It’s an art of discovery, and play. Great conversation is about composition: Listening to many people or ideas, and create something new. That’s common for us when, as children, we played. Unfortunately, it’s also something we outgrow. It’s something we lose, much to our detriment.

[…] Start your own inquiry. Mess with my ideas, take what works for you, ignore what doesn’t and add your own. What is on offer here is more about a way of being in the world than acquiring a technique which will make you look good. Conversation is, after all, something we do together.

~ Robert Poynton, from Do Conversation, p15

It’s important to ask ourselves why do we converse. It is rare to be surprised at the encounter with a new-to-us idea. That’s not a good way to live. That’s a way to live in stagnation and complacency. Go do something—be somewhere unusual for you—for the sole purpose of talking with someone.

What’s surprised you recently, and what have you composed using that?

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